What cathedral are you building?

I’ve been on a school trip to York these last few days. As you’ll know if you’ve been there, the Minster dominates the city. On a walk round the city walls, I was chatting with a 10-year old about the 250 years it took to build, from 1220 and 1472.

We spoke about how many generations of one family it might take and how many “greats” you would need to put before great-great-great- granddad etc to reach the first mason in your family. We spoke about how many tonnes of stone and how the Minster was built on a Roman fort. And we spoke about Cathedral Thinking and we wondered what the equivalents would be nowadays – civil rights, perhaps, or the environment – what sort of projects people involved themselves in that they knew they would not see the end of but believed to be worth it. (We also talked about whether people ever thought the Minster was a waste of time)

The boy then asked me something that I loved.

“What’s your cathedral, sir?”

Have been thinking about it ever since.